At NYT, She Said No to ‘He Said/She Said’–but They Said Yes

The new public editor at the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, dedicated her first column (9/16/12) to factchecking and false balance. Her conclusion:

Margaret Sullivan

It ought to go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: Journalists need to make every effort to get beyond the spin and help readers know what to believe, to help them make their way through complicated and contentious subjects.

The more news organizations can state established truths and stand by them, the better off the readership–and the democracy–will be.

It’s good news that Sullivan thinks this way–and an improvement over her predecessor’s much-maligned column wondering if the Times should try to figure out if politicians tell the truth.

The bad news, though, is that there are editors at the paper who don’t seem to agree with Sullivan’s sensible take. The issue used to illustrate the argument over false balance is voter fraud. The facts are clear: This is basically a nonexistent problem that Republicans and conservative groups are using to push laws make it more difficult to vote.

The media problem is that reporters treat both sides of this “debate” as if they are more or less equally valid. Sullivan says she’s heard from readers who want the Times to be clear about what the facts are:

In his article, which led last Monday’s paper, the national reporter Ethan Bronner made every effort to provide balance. Some readers say the piece, in so doing, wrongly suggested that there was enough voter fraud to justify strict voter identification requirements–rules that some Democrats believe amount to vote suppression. Ben Somberg of the Center for Progressive Reform said the Times itself had established in multiple stories that there was little evidence of voter fraud.

“I hope it’s not the Times‘s policy to move this matter back into the ‘he said she said’ realm,” he wrote.

Disclosure: Ben Somberg is a former FAIR intern, still doing media criticism.

The most valuable part of Sullivan’s column is here:

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said. One side says there’s not significant voter fraud; the other side says there’s not significant voter suppression.

“It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper,” Mr. Sifton said. “We need to state what each side says.”

Mr. Bronner agreed. “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” he said. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.”

While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

The admissions are remarkable. An editor at the Times likens providing useful context to readers to “litigating” an argument. If you’re a vote-suppressing Republican, this is music to your ears; it confirms that an editor doesn’t seem to think checking the integrity of your argument is the business of the Paper of Record.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

This is one of the maddening parts of the corporate media – and this happens everywhere from the NYT to NPR. The argument seems to be that the newsmedia’s job is to “objectively” present information with no duty to say what is true or not. Nonsense.

So if the Right wants to continue talking about Obama being a Muslim or whatever, then the media reports “such and such says Obama is a Muslim” and seldom corrects the nonsense.

It amounts to tacit support of the conservative leanings of corporations and does a disservice to the public by letting outright lies go unchallenged.

Whether there has been significant voter fraud is not the story. The New York Times should have reported that laws have been passed by Republican majorities in 23 state legislatures expressly in order to disenfranchise voters and for no other reason whatever.

One of the reasons the Times and other corpress outlets became branded as “the liberal media” is that they didn’t present the blatant racism and oppression in the apartheid South a half-century ago as just one side of the story.

Not to ascribe any altruism to that. To have done so would have been to so completely and utterly deny reality that all legitimacy as journalists would be lost.

Fast forward to today, and you have the same issues in the guise of voter suppression, but a very different calculus is in effect.

This is evident in many other areas as well, of course, from climate destruction to imperial wars (the “pragmatic”, not moral, abandonment of the Southeast Asia project being another reason for the “liberal media” label).

I think the key here is that truthfully covering overt racial repression in the South didn’t challenge the national power structure.

Doing so with respect to the issues above certainly does.

So this is how the corpress maintains the illusion of journalistic integrity, by covering struggles in a “balanced” way.

And that provides cover for the omissions and outright propaganda (aka “lies”) that are also part and parcel of mainstream media.

I am with BearPaw: WTF? If you can’t any ‘voter fraud’ then why are you claiming it is the problem that can only be solved by Draconian Methods. Here’s an idea, when the alleged editors and journalist do this, present a complete unbalanced and unfair report, we nail their hats to their heads….. That’s how you apply draconian measures to correct a problem.

@Roger Bloyce – But your forgetting in an effort to be fair and balanced, they don’t see it as “Voter Suppression” because it is there to correct a problem (even though it isn’t there). It can’t voter Suppression because it is a solution (to a problem that doesn’t exist).

Or conversely if there is no voter fraud to report on, then you can’t report on the Voter suppression, because the rethuglicans are only trying to present a solution (that isn’t needed) to a problem (that doesn’t exist). And this point we would have Robert Graves come in to explain about solutions (that aren’t needed) to Problems (that don’t exist) – Men in Black.

When did we redefine balanced to mean presenting truth and lies as equally valid? That is not balance; balance is when the facts are presented clearly, and opinions are balanced. Whether or not there is evidence of voter fraud is not an opinion; the lack of evidence does not need to be balanced in any way.
To take another example, where there is clearly space—and, I believe, a need—for balancing opinions: A report on recidivism among prisoners in State X states that the frequency is X%; it goes on to state that causes include. . . . . In this case, one would hope that the various possible causes (e.g., lack of employment opportunity, criminal associates met in prison, lack of personal support, inherent violent instincts, anything else one can name) would be presented by proponents of each, questioned by skeptics of each, but without any discussion of the percentage reported, unless there is clear evidence that the generally reported percentage is wrong. That is emphatically not the case with voter fraud—nobody has shown that it is more than a footnote.

We, Americans, which mean politicians, because they are the “voice” of America. My “voice” with which I talk to peers is as follows. I am middle class, retired military and retired civil service, close to the top 4% because I planned for my future. That said, I do no sign my credit cards on the back, I print ” Ask for I.D.” Why do I do this? I want the cashier to know that it is ME. I feel that anyone that is really interested in voting should have the initiative to go to their local government office and get a identification card. We expect immigrants to have a Green Card, student visa, or work permit. The Americans that get out the vote on election days by canvassing churches are just getting votes, not informed votes. These Americans have an agenda which is to elect “their” politician of choice, probably not to have individuals practice their right to vote!!

Wrong–go back and re-read the article above. I have to ask–have you ever voted before? One does not just walk in and vote–you know that, I’m sure, and you completely missed the point of the article. There is, statistically speaking, no voter fraud. The Republicons are trying to suppress the vote, a crime in all fifty states. There is doubt about any of this. They are doing it for a very good reason–they are the minority party, and as they get crazier and ever more brazen in their fealty to the anti-democratic forces in this country, their minority status will become more acute. They can’t win fairly, so they cheat.
The above article contains one line that sums up the whole rotten, boot-licking enterprise that is the Major Media: “”It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper,” Mr. Sifton said. “We need to state what each side says.”
Right. He says that they should be stenographers, and uses a weasel word–“litigate”–to avoid stating the truth. And that is to find the truth, and report it, and the consequences be damned.

Dumbest argument of the century.People Jimmy Carter started the move toward voter I.D.Surprised?You know Jimmy Carter that huge racist and vote stopper.It is long overdue.ID is available as easy as the asking.Instead of helping those few people who for some strange reason have no Id ,the left fights to make sure they are reinforced in their belief that they should not need one.And Folks- it is not the “right” that believes in this.It is most people in this country AND all the courts so far.You don’t even have to believe in voter fraud to understand the need for it.This is a no brainer.Find me any endeavor where no fraud exists.What idiot believes that?Of course there is fraud in voting.It goes without saying.No need to even investigate and draw up numbers.To quote Bob Dillon (and referring to Obamas bud Bill Ayers)……”.You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”It happens people.Sometimes rampant .Sometimes not.And of course the Dems fighting tooth and nail to stop US servicemen serving abroad from having an extra day to vote (for mail in AB ballot votes) is an interesting twist.Could it be they got the poll numbers on how that faction is voting.?Just go out and find me many things you need no ID for.It wont hurt either side to shore up the security of our one man one vote rules.
This election could be close.God help us if it is ….and courts get a say.We need one man one vote to be as certain as we can make it.

If you cannot come up with any real evidence of fraud (and you cannot) then this whole voter ID thing is a blatant attempt at blocking millions of legitimate votes. It goes against everything this country is supposed to be about. And every one of those voters is a “side”. There are not “two” sides here. This is known as “lying with statistics”.
Now, if somebody really believes that there is a future potential fraud, then let us to the simple and correct thing. Allow for a period of time, say five years, for everyone to get such an ID. That way, there is no bias in the short term against any election.
The problem here is that since this is an alleged solution to a non-problem, and so aligned along party lines, that trying force IDs must be represented for what it is: fraud. And the media needs to have the guts to call it that way.
If it was up to me in a famous previous election, I would have called out the National Guard, gathered up a bunch of mechanical voting machines, and had the entire state of Florida revote using them. The fate of democracy cannot be left to hang on a chad, nor can it be left to this voter ID nonsense.
In our legal system, it is better that one hundred guilty people go free than to convict one innocent man. The logical extension of our democracy is that it is better that millions of legitimate voters get to cast their ballot than one or two “fraudsters” possibly cast an illegimate vote. Any reporter who doesn’t have the brains or the stones to say so needs to move to China or join the circus. The greater good here is so obvious that it pains me that anybody could even think otherwise.

Well put, J Lori.
The issue at hand is not about voter fraud or whether everyone should have an ID. These are smoke screens for the real issue of voter suppression. Preventing people from voting is the only objective for proponents of voter ID laws. Anyone who rails on about how everyone should make an effort to obtain an ID is just carrying water for the right wing extremists who are trying to deny Americans the right to vote.

Such Bullshit.To believe their is no voter fraud is to believe in the easter bunny.We all know the jokes.Vote early and often.The case made by Jimmy Carter was a good one.Bout time we got around to getting it passed.The courts agree.Most people agree.Anyone who wants an I.D can get one.No one is being stopped from obtaining one.If you can’t find the time to register…..get an I.D…..and find your way to a voting booth(or ask for help doing any of the above) well what can I say- we have yet to find a way to do it by telepathy.After what happened with Bush Gore do we really need to prove the need for an absolute one man- one vote ruling?And this voter ID will help in that.And bottom line is the courts all agree it is legal and constitutional.So really you should be helping anyone who needs one to get one.

That m.e. uses an occasional “bullshit” is the least of his problems. Hmmm . . . so the Supreme Court stops the re-count and thereby gives the election to Bush; this has what to do with Republican-sponsored voter supression?
P.S.: Exactly, Andy and Jonathan Lori. That m.e. is incoherently wailing about this Republicon-sponsored malfeasance is proof-positive that the whole voter fraud meme is a load of crap.

Tim you are not really going back over that old ground are you?You well know that it was Gore who brought the courts in….and lost.You also know that there has not been any recounts that have proven Gore won.Moving on……….Im sure you want to get back to all those dead people voting.Seems the courts(not the Republicans)now say that voter ID is legal Beagle,and does not infringe on anyones right to vote.You people on the left care about nothing but winning,by any means.Remember I worked in politics.For Clinton.The fraud was disgusting to me on the left even when it was my side.Nothing like it exists on the right.The left literally pays the masses to vote for them.With other peoples money.